Amid Board of Regents discussion of the amount of the University of Hawaii athletic department’s latest projected ($11.4 million) accumulated five-year net deficit, school president David Lassner offered a suggestion.

Knowing that football coach Nick Rolovich was across the room, Lassner kidded, “Going to the Sugar Bowl (again) will help.”

Then, he looked toward Rolovich and said, “Nick…?”

Rolovich managed a slight, courtesy, grin.

But if you are the Rainbow Warriors’ football coach, the realities of trying to achieve a Sugar Bowl return on a shoestring budget these days takes some effort to smile.

In the intervening years since the unbeaten 2007 regular season that propelled UH into the 2008 Sugar Bowl, the landscape has changed significantly. These days things like cost of attendance stipends, year-round (if not almost 24-hour) training tables, family-wide recruiting visits and TV rights fees have increasingly separated the haves and have-nots in recruiting.

And UH is in the second group.

“We’re not fully funding (cost of attendance, COA), so we are behind,” athletic director David Matlin told the regents Committee on Interscholastic Athletics in a frank exchange on the subject Friday.

COA, which schools were allowed to begin offering in 2015, is designed to help cover costs (home travel, phone, clothes and other expenses) that traditional, basic athletic scholarships don’t provide.

Regents were told that while UH calculates the actual cost of attendance at slightly above $3,000 a year, it provides funding at about half that level for football (some other sports get slightly more). Meanwhile, many schools UH competes against offer twice as much, or more, for football.

For example, Mountain West Conference members Nevada ($4,800), San Diego State ($4,203), Boise State ($3,986) and Utah State ($3,840) topped out at much more. That’s despite Hawaii’s higher cost of living.

Committee chairman Jeff Portnoy asked Rolovich if COA was a significant factor in recruiting — “…or just something that’s nice to have?”

Rolovich said, “It is, I would say, fairly significant.”

He added, “I wouldn’t say it is the No. 1 thing, but it is up there. It gets used against us.”

Rolovich said, “You’re looking at many families where some of (the player’s) scholarship is going home, some of their Pell Grant, some of their cost of attendance. … That’s the truth. When you’re hearing $4,500-$5,000 (a year), that’s (huge) to some families. For a lot of these kids, this is a chance to get a free education and help out at home, too.”

Matlin said, “We’re not where we want to be but we have to be as fiscally responsible as possible. I think the important thing is that we are doing it (offering some cost of attendance).”

Matlin said the athletic department provides funding of about $150,000-$160,000 annually toward COA but relies on the fundraising of coaches and others to cover the balance of what is offered.

In addition, regents were told that with the NCAA now allowing schools to underwrite travel costs for parents to make recruiting visits with their children UH is hard pressed to keep up. “We’d have to triple our (recruiting) budget,” Rolovich said.

Rolovich said he tries to look at what UH has rather than what it doesn’t. “I don’t want what we don’t have to be an excuse. I tell (the players) you are getting more services, more opportunities, than any players who have ever been here (at UH) before you.”

But, sometimes, that isn’t enough.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.